Pro-Life Groups Just Begun To Fight

Politico reports:

Social conservatives lost Round One against Planned Parenthood, but they got a taste of what’s possible and vowed Saturday to return for more.

“We’re not finished with this, ” Penny Nance, CEO of Concerned Women for America, said in an interview. “The fiscal year 2012 budget is just around the corner. We are going to continue to work to defund Planned Parenthood.”

That fight could make this one look quaint by comparison. Republicans have staked out the battle over Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan’s dramatic budget proposal — with $6.2 trillion in cuts and a remaking of Medicaid and Medicare — as a defining ideological moment for the party.

But if House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) had hoped to keep his party tightly focused on jobs and the economy, social conservatives — emboldened by their ability to push government shutdown negotiations to the brink — have a different goal in mind.

And Democrats couldn’t be happier about it.

Several Democratic insiders said they believed the tide turned in their favor once the debate shifted from a larger fight over government spending to a more narrow focus on eliminating funding for women’s health services, including for groups like Planned Parenthood, long a target for conservatives.

If the next round of spending talks is overshadowed by social issues, Democrats believe they have a tested roadmap for gaining the upper hand politically.

“They lose this fight if people think this is about Planned Parenthood. It turns them into the rank social ideologues nobody wants when they’re unemployed,” an aide to a moderate Democrat senator up for reelection in 2012, said before the deal was struck. “Earlier this week, they had us in a bit of a box, but I think we’ve … turned it around” quickly.

The budget deal, in the end, turned out to be a mixed bag for both sides.

Click here to read more.